Market adoption of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has exploded, as users from a wide range of backgrounds and vertical industries have brought this technology into their homes, offices, and increasingly into the public air space. This inflection point has highlighted not only the limitations of earlier-generation systems, but also the changing role that WLAN technology now plays in people's work and lifestyles across the globe. Indeed, WLANs are rapidly changing from convenience networks to business-critical networks. Increasingly users are depending on WLANs to improve the timeliness and productivity of their communications and applications, and in doing so, require greater visibility, security, management, and performance from their network.
Given the mobility provided by WLANs, there also exists a strong market desire to provide location-aware applications that can utilize a broad array of information that a given network infrastructure may collect on mobile nodes, such as mobile stations, rogues, RFID tags, and the like. Indeed, the mobility afforded by WLANs has generated great interest in applications and services that are a function of a mobile user's physical location. Examples of such applications include: printing a document on the nearest printer, locating a mobile user, displaying a map of the immediate surroundings, and guiding a user inside a building. In addition, identifying the location of wireless clients facilitates a variety of security and management tasks associated with wireless networks. For example, location tracking lets network administrators locate clients and assets in a timely manner, establish access control policies that are based on geographic location and identify the source and location of rogue access points, among other benefits. The required or desired granularity of location information varies from one application to another. Indeed, the accuracy required by an application that selects the nearest network printer, or locates a rogue access point, often requires the ability to determine in what room a mobile station is located. Accordingly, much effort has been dedicated to improving the accuracy of wireless node location mechanisms. Some of the U.S. applications identified above disclose wireless node location mechanisms integrated into WLAN infrastructures. In addition to location tracking information, some application may desire to use other information maintained by the wireless network infrastructure. Many location tracking systems, however, are based on separate or overlay networks, which may not cover an entire Wireless LAN. By not integrating location tracking capabilities into the WLAN infrastructure itself, it is often difficult to develop applications that examine data related to WLAN operation and therefore diagnose or detect problems at given locations in the wireless network infrastructure.
In light of the foregoing, a need in the art exists for methods, apparatuses, and systems directed to the integrated collection and processing of location and wireless network data. Embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill this need.